ARCHITECTURE; Architectural Shifts, Global And Local

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

Published: September 9, 2007

OVERWHELMED by the globetrotting needed to keep up with the new museums opening every year? Well, put on your track shoes. Keep up the pace.

The ribbon cuttings this season begin at the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, finally opening after a decade of delays. Bernard Tschumi's delicate exercise in blending contemporary architecture into a weighty historical context carries a political message from the Greek government. It is an argument for bringing home the Elgin Marbles.

In Washington, Norman Foster's handsome new courtyard addition to the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art, part of the Smithsonian, is to be unveiled in November. The courtyard's lacy new glass-and-steel canopy is meant to give a touch of elegance to the Greek Revival setting.

The Broad Contemporary Art Museum, Renzo Piano's building at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is scheduled to open in February. Though not as adventurous as an earlier proposal by Rem Koolhaas, Mr. Piano's sparkling new structure, to be accompanied by a renovation of the existing 20-acre museum campus, should add light and clarity to its currently motley collection of six buildings.

Finally the completion of the New Museum of Contemporary Art on the Lower East Side in December is expected to be a significant cultural development in the city. Designed by the Japanese firm SANAA, the bento box configuration is wrapped in glorious aluminum mesh cladding, a beacon for hope in the city's architectural fortunes.

New Yorkers will see several major nonmuseum projects getting under way this season, and these could bring about the biggest shift in decades in the city's physical identity.

The most startling is a $14 billion plan by the developers Stephen M. Ross and Steven Roth to rebuild a swath of Midtown that includes Madison Square Garden, Pennsylvania Station and the James A. Farley post office. The plan is to be released in the fall, and hanging in the balance is the fate of the old Penn Station.

Another huge project is the $4 billion Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn, and Frank Gehry will soon unveil his redesign of its first phase, so it will soon become clear whether Brooklyn will receive a dazzling 21st-century version of Rockefeller Center or a conventional retail-entertainment-sports complex inside a pretty architectural wrapper.

Meanwhile take a minute to look up. A new Jean Nouvel tower in midtown. A Richard Meier apartment block in Brooklyn. The relentless march of luxury residential towers never ceases to redefine the city skyline.

PHOTO: A rendering of the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, designed by Bernard Tschumi. (PHOTOGRAPH BY BERNARD TSCHUMI ARCHITECTS)